


Stargazing with Graham

by The_Other_Timeless_Child



Series: Quiet Times [2]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:35:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25509853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Other_Timeless_Child/pseuds/The_Other_Timeless_Child
Summary: 1. Hanging out at a nebula2. Tea and asteroids
Series: Quiet Times [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1848016
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

INT. TARDIS - “EARLY MORNING” - CONSOLE ROOM WITH DOORS OPEN TO THE MEDUSA CASCADE.  
THE DOCTOR Standing at the console anxiously flipping knobs and buttons.

“Come ooooon, just show me…. Look, all right I think I know already what it’s gonna say, It’s going to be The Library if I’m wrong, just let me know.”

A display lights up and shows Circular Gallifreyan.

“Ha, I knew it! So how long have you been uploading to The Library?”

The TARDIS hums a series of tones.

“That is not an answer! OK. Right. Let’s assume it’s been since after the Time War. You wouldn’t have had a reason not to use the Matrix before that...”

The TARDIS beeps a series of annoyed tones.

“All right, fine, you’ve always sent stuff to The Library, you like it better, I get it. I would too.”

The Doctor paces in a circle around the console.

“So what if I’d asked you, in the past when I was younger, before I’d learned about The Library, would you have let me think you’re sending stuff to the Matrix, oh, oh, you’ve been sending to both places, haven’t you?”

The Tardes remain silent.  
The Doctor wanders around, up stairs, back down, and around the console again.

“Okay....No, then, Oh, yes! You’ve been sending false information to the Matrix, protecting me. And your chameleon circuit isn’t even really broken is it? You just like the shape, a familiar shape to one day jog my memory. I am your Thief, and you stole me, because I didn’t remember that you had been my TARDIS, and you wanted to see the universe again. I’m right, aren’t I?”

The TARDIS changes a display on the console, in English it reads ‘Volume I - History of the Felman Lux Corporation 49th and 50th Centuries’.

“Oh, thank you, thank you, you wonderful Old Girl!!”

The Doctor grabs a data device that looks remarkably similar to one of Rivers, and downloads the document, then goes and sits by the open TARDIS doors to read.

Graham approaches carrying a thermos. He looks around the console room, not seeing The Doctor, starts to turn around to leave, but then notices the open doors and a familiar colourful nebular. He walks around the console and joins The Doctor at the open doors.

“Hey, Doc, you park us here a lot don’t ya, you really must like this place?”

The Doctor smiles up at Graham, “Hi Graham!”, The Doctor sets the data pad down and swings her legs around so they can both sit with their feet dangling out the edge of the TARDIS.

“The Medusa Cascade, I’ve been coming here for as long as I can remember, and trust me Graham, that is a very long time.”

“O… The Master, told me he knew you when you used to be a man, I’m sorry Doc, for thinking you were joking.”

The Doctor smiles, “It’s alright Graham, I’ve regenerated in front of friends before and even they’ve had a hard time believing I was still me, took ‘em a little bit but they got there. It’s all right for you to be a bit skeptic, you hadn’t met me before.”

Graham opens up the thermos and pours a cuppa, pulls out a bag of sugar cubes from his pocket and hands them to The Doctor. The Doctor excepts Graham’s offering and chuckles.

“Now Graham, just because I don’t always join you all for meals doesn’t mean I’m not remembering to eat, I just don’t sleep as much as humans so meals are on a different schedule, that’s all. But I do love a good tea, so thanks.”

“You know Doc, you show us all these amazing places out in the Universe, but you have some pretty fantastic places, right in here too. And just when I think I got my nut around how the layout of this place works it changes, and there’s a new room discovered.”

“Well, she is infinite, you could continuously be discovering new rooms.”

“Have you ever had anyone get lost in here?”

“No, I don’t think so, I once thought I had a Ood lost in here, but turns out I left him at The Ponds.”

“Doc, sometimes you tell us these things, and I wonder if you’re just trying to distract us or if you don’t realize that we don’t know what an Ood is…”

“You haven’t met an Ood, yet?” And Graham shakes his head. “They are gentle and kind, empaths, that share a low-level telepathic communication field and a hive mind. Unfortunately they are susceptible to telepathic control, I try to save them when I can, and help them get back home. Humans in the future enslaved them, basically lobotomised them and installed a translator sphere. They've subsequently been emancipated.”

“I bet you had a hand in freeing them, didn’t you Doc?”

“When I first met them Graham, l overlooked the Ood under the shadow of a crisis, it was said they were born to serve, and I didn’t look into it, then. But the TARDIS takes me to where I need to be. The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire arrived in the 39th century and they enslaved the Ood. So when I found myself on Ood’s moon in 4126 I aided in their rebellion and we put a stop to Ood enslavement.”

Graham sighs and turns to look out at the nebula, “Does humanity ever learn?” 

“Graham, sometimes people aren’t always the best of humanity, but that means you have to strive to be better. To recognize when you are in the wrong, to teach others to be better. It takes time, and sometimes those lessons need to be re-learned, but as a whole humanity does become better.”

They both sit quietly, looking out the doors, contemplating, with slight awkwardness The doctor, eventually nods out toward the nebula.

“The Medusa Cascade, beautiful isn’t it, it has space-time rift at its heart, I've had to seal it once or twice. The Daleks once stole twenty-seven planets, brought them here, planned to set off a reality bomb to penetrate the Cascade's space-time rift and spread the bomb's destructive force across every possible timeline and all of existence.”

Graham looked back at The Doctor smiles and then back out to the Cascade, “Well, clearly that didn’t happen.”

“Yup, couldn’t have been stopped without help from some of the best humans on Earth.”

Graham looked back at The Doctor, as she fidgets, and notices the data pad with the English text.

“Are you reading a book? You could join us, ya know. Yaz and Ryan went back to that library you showed us last night, I think Ryan’s already on his 3rd book about 50th Century mechanical design. Although I got to say, as amazing as that one is I like the little one better, more cozy, like a study rather than a library.”

“You and me both Graham, that one was my wife’s favorite too, I think the TARDIS made it for her.”

“I know it’s supposed to be a secret, but Ryan did tell me the reason behind The Library.” Graham glances at The Doctor, “After Grace’s service, Yaz asked you about your family.” ....”It’s just, I mean, it must’ve been hard.”

“Ryan told you what I said about, River?” Graham nodded, “Honestly, Graham I’m not sure which one of us, it was harder on. As I got older she knew me less, but sometimes she would show up and still know me more, and then less the next. There were days she had to pretend she didn’t know her parents were parents. As she got older, I knew her less and less until one day I was so young I didn’t know her at all and she didn’t survive it.”

“I’m sorry, Doc.”

“I don't like endings Graham, if I don’t know the ending, I can always go back to the middle somewhere and say hi, after all I am a traveler, through space, and time.”

“So with her, with River, there’s no middle left?”

“I don’t know Graham, and I’m too afraid to look, to have confirmation that it’s gone.”

Graham nods, he looks back down at the pad again, as the Doctor starts to fidget again. “So, what were you reading?”

“I was reading about the history of the family that built The Library, but I’ve gotten up to the part where they build The Library and I’m not so sure I should read that bit, it might alter or affect anything we do.”

The Doctor turns and looks at Graham “Do you want to come help build a planet-sized library?”

“I think I’ll give this one a pass. But Ryan’ll be alright, he won’t he? I mean if something happened to him, and I wasn’t here… I don’t know….”

“Graham, you know I can’t make promises, but as far as adventures go this one should be fairly safe. But if you want some kind of assurance, you can read the rest from the data pad, so long as you don’t tell us anything we shouldn’t know.”


	2. Have you ever considered chairs?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tea and asteroids.

INT. TARDIS - “EARLY MORNING” - CONSOLE ROOM.  
THE DOCTOR Laying under the console “fixing” a widget.  
GRAHAM enters carrying two tea cups, with a thermos cap visible from his jacket pocket.

“It was not.” The doctor says, sounding annoyed.

The TARDIS hums a series of tones, also annoyed.

“...Well I am making it better.”

At which point a spark is seen near to the Doctor.

“Ouch! You did that on purpose.”

The TARDIS hums, non-committedly followed by a series of tones.

“Fine, but only because the Fam will be up soon…. Yes we can refresh the water in the Forest. Oh really, it has to be fresh from the source? Yes, yes, I’ll get you a sample.”

Graham is leaning against one of the columns, as the Doctor crawls out from underneath the TARDIS.

“Hey Doc, have you ever considered chairs in here?”

Surprised that someone has witnessed her losing conversation with the TARDIS, as she didn’t sense Graham arrive, and still a little testy about the unsuccessful ‘repair’. “What is everyone a critic today?”

“Not being critical, but I mean we do spend a lotta time here, would kinda be nice to have some chairs around, and you know TVs and movies always have chairs in the control room on spaceships.”

Graham joins the Doctor at the console and hands off the cup of tea.

“Graham, she’s not the kind of ship that you fly sitting down, besides the TARDIS did the redecorating, and she decided she didn’t want chairs this time.”

“So you’re saying, if we could see the room before, that there would be chairs around the console?

The Doctor sets the tea down, makes a circle around the TARDIS Console sort of pacing, and comes to a stop roughly where one of Twelve’s chairs were placed.

“There was a chair about here, and points over there, another one on either side of a secondary console.”

The doctor makes another circuit around the TARDIS and stops where the jumpseat used to be.

“Before that there was a jumpseat here.”

“Don’t really work with the room layout does it?”

“No Graham, they do not, but if you ask nicely she might consider giving you something along the perimeter.”

“I'll be sure to talk to others about that, so where did you park us today?”

The Doctor whirls around the console, grabs her tea, and hits the door controls open. “I give you the Rings of Akhaten.”

Graham and the Doctor head over and sit at the doors, once they’re settled in the Graham hands the Doctor a bag of sugar cubes.

“The asteroids round Akhaten are where most of the action is, Akhaten below is sentient. Just here to check up on it, see how he’s was doing.”

What sort of action are the asteroids getting you mean like collisions or something?”

“No Graham, nothing of the sort, see that large one over there? The Doctor gestures vaguely out the door to the left. That one is inhabited, it’s called Tiaanamat, there are vast winding markets down there, it’s quite magnificent you can buy and sell a lot of rare and exotic goods.”

“You’ve been to it then?”

“Yes, twice, once with Clara, and then before with my Granddaughter not long after we left Gallifrey.”

Graham, not sure if dropping people's names and the fact that the Doctor apparently is a grandmother into the conversation is meant to distract him or not, decides to stay on topic. “Doc, what happened here that you need to check up on Akhaten? Was it like with the Ood, and you had to go back to put it right?”

“No, not really, it was a test of a sort for Clara. You see, I'd met her before, twice, and she died both times. So when I met her again, I didn’t understand how it was possible, so invited her to come with me. However, before I picked her up for our next trip, I….I did something I’d never done with anyone I’ve ever invited to come along with me. I researched her.”

Realizing that name dropping Clara might not have been a distraction, but an important part of this story, Graham tries to get it to make sense. “That’s confusing Doc, did you at least find out how you met her before? I mean was it like….”

“Not then, later found out it was Missy.”

“Who’s Missy?”

Confused the Doctor turns and blinks at Graham, “What do you mean, you’ve met Missy.”

“No, Doc I really haven’t.”

“Oh, right. Doctor can be a gender neutral name. Whereas Missy, short for Mistress rather than the Master is not.”

“Wait a tic, the Master caused the death of multiple Claras?”

“No! Missy gave Clara my phone number, said I was the IT help desk.”

Graham is just more confused with this whole line of conversation then he was before. “Doc, how about we get back to how you were testing Clara, and why ya need to check up on Akhaten.”

“I brought us a little asteroid little over to the right from where we’re at. As one of the asteroids passed by the Temple of the Rings of Akhaten became visible. It was a holy temple for the Old God, Sun-singers of Akhet and those of the seven systems believed that life in the universe originated there. Also I told her of the markets.”

“And she asked to go see them?”

“Yes, then I disappeared on her and left her to explore on her own to see what she got up to. And yes it was sort of like the Ood, but not at all. At worst it would just be a fun day out for her. At best we’d learn the secrets of the millennial ceremony known as ‘The Festival of Offerings’.” I told her two rules that day: We never walk away, and when we’re holding onto something precious we run. 

“You do that with us sometimes, just disappear, were you testing us?”

“No, I trust you to keep each other safe, and I only do that on planets I know are mostly harmless, with stable governments.”

Graham, slightly stunned, and unsure if he’s miffed on behalf of Clara, decides to get back to the story of Akhaten, “So what was it, did you end up learning the secrets of the festival?”

“Yes Graham, we did. Akhaten is sentient, he’s an old god, so they say, but he’s not really, he’s a parasite. He feeds on one's potential...and Clara put him to sleep, with a leaf of infinite potential. I am checking to make sure he stays that way so no other needs to be sacrificed to him.”

“Sacrificed? Did she die, again?”

“Not then, later, her death was related to something that Rassilon and High Council of Gallifrey’s did, so I cheated, I made them get her back, at a heartbeat before the moment of her death.”

“Could you….could you do something like that for Grace?”

“On Gallifrey there is an extraction chamber for that, but Graham, It’s not right what I did. She was taken out of time, timelocked, her heartbeat frozen between one beat and the last, when something like that’s done it’s only supposed to be for moments. I took the General's gun, and unfortunately for The General, as the sidearm of the President's Personal Security, it had no stun setting....perhaps not my best moment, but I escaped with Clara and took her to the end of the universe to try to restart her heart. It didn’t work.

“So, you could bring Grace back except she wouldn’t really be alive and, you’d have to kill someone else to do it!!?” Doc, that goes against everything you’ve shown us you are!”

“When you say it like that Graham, it does sound bad”.

“Doc, it’s more than sounds, it is! What about what you told me with Tim Shaw?”

“I strive to be The Doctor, but sometimes I’m not, Graham. Before Clara, my wife showed up at the end of a battle to point out to me the path I was on. She reminded me that Doctor, the name I chose, a name that means healer across the universe, comes from me, but that I was becoming someone who could turn armies around at the mere mention of my name, a name that meant “Mighty Warrior” to the people of the Gamma Forest.”

Graham looks at the Doctor, shakes his head, “I can’t see it.”

“It's true, I’d gotten too big, so then I went and erased myself from the records. I do stick by what I told you about guns, Graham. The Doctor doesn’t use them, even in the Time War it was said that the first and last thing one noticed was that the Doctor of War was unarmed, words are the Doctor’s main weapon.”

“So who were you then, when you shot the General?”

“Having removed Rassilon and the rest of the High Council from power, so I suppose I was the Lord President of Gallifrey, again and the General was a timelord that had regenerations left in their cycle, so my killing wasn’t permanent. However when we regenerate, it is like dying. I’d like to think if Kenossium didn’t have any regenerations left I would’ve done something other than shoot The General, but I was hell-bent on saving Clara and I was angry. I’d just spent 4.5 billion years trapped, in a place not meant as a torture chamber for the living. I could’ve gotten out sooner, had I only told them the answer to the secret they wanted to hear, thing is I didn’t know the answer, but I pretended I did, it was my only bargaining chip. Clara’s death was due to their trap for me, but that doesn’t make what I did any better and eventually she does have to go back to the moment of death. She still died in that alley, and I had to forget her.”

“Eh, that’s a lot to get me nut around but, how can you be telling me a story about someone you’ve forgotten?” 

“I was given a gift just before I regenerated, and it returned my memories of who Clara was, however I fear that means she’s returned to Gallifrey and the point to her death.

Graham and the Doctor sit quietly looking out the door, and when the Doctor starts to swing her legs back-and-forth Graham notices her cup is empty and refills it from the thermos in his pocket.

“Doc you never did say, how are you going to make sure Akhaten is still asleep? Do we need to go over to the temple?”

“No Graham, I can tell from here. He’s still sleeping.”

“If I ask you how you can tell that, it’s not going to be a simple answer is it?”

“It could be simple, but you would have to just accept that answer, without asking follow up questions.”

“Alright Doc, let’s hear the simple answer.”

As the Temple of a Akhaten moves into view the Doctor points it out. “There were essentially two groups of people that shared Gallifrey, the Timelords and the Shobogan. In the age before some became Timelords, the matriarchal leaders of the planet were The Pythia, they possessed powerful psychic powers and the power of precognition. To a certain extent, some of those powers, like telepathy, still exist in the people of Gallifrey in varying degrees and for the Timelords those abilities can vary with regeneration, and that’s how I know.”

Graham and the Doctor continue to sit quietly in the doorway finishing their tea, until the Doctor announces “Yaz and Ryan are up now and best join them for breakfast.”


End file.
